In this little-known but fast-growing corner of the auto market, dealers command premium prices for road-worn vehicles and finance the sales at interest rates that can top 30%.
posted by sf9719 on Oct 31, 2011 - 66 comments

India's microcredit industry may be near to collapse [more inside]
posted by Forktine on Nov 17, 2010 - 54 comments

Return My Pants! There is no "About" page, or FAQ, or even site directions. You have two choices: Lend or Borrow.
posted by cjorgensen on Sep 15, 2009 - 31 comments

Sodnomdarjaa Khaltarkhuu never expected to be a metaphor for the far-reaching impacts of the financial downturn.
posted by Pants! on Apr 20, 2009 - 5 comments

"The calculation of Libor is co-ordinated by just two people, who work in an unremarkable open-plan office in London’s Docklands .. They do this electronically, but sometimes the co-ordinators make a phone call to a bank that hasn’t sent in its estimates, and if the latter seem implausible – typos, for example, are fairly common – they’re checked, also with a quick call: ‘Hi there, is the Kiwi chap [provider of the estimates for borrowing New Zealand dollars] about? . . . Bit of a spread on the two month. Everyone else is coming in a good bit under that.’" Calculating the Libor and how London became the center of the international money markets, from the LBR.
posted by geoff. on Sep 23, 2008 - 12 comments

A fairly lucid description of recent actions of the Federal Reserve.
posted by landis on Aug 17, 2007 - 86 comments

For those of you who haven't been following The Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter and other purveyors of financial and real estate schadenfreude, the sub-prime mortgage market is in some serious trouble. The stock charts of the likes of New Century Financial and Fremont say a lot, although BusinessWeek and MarketWatch have been helpful in explaining. Is there really fraud in 70% of early payment defaults? I know traders are given to hyperbole, but Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch as "almost junk"?
posted by Adamchik on Mar 5, 2007 - 55 comments

Prosper is people-to-people money lending online. [via fosfor]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Mar 7, 2006 - 27 comments

Worse Than the World Bank? Export Credit Agencies--The Secret Engine of Globalization The amount of investment that export credit agencies (ECA) support worldwide is significantly greater than the total amount of lending from the World Bank, IMF and all other multilateral institutions combined. ECA's account for the single biggest component of developing country debt and half of all new greenhouse gas-emitting industrial projects in developing countries have some sort of ECA support. Investments in places like Guatemala, South Africa, Pakistan, Chile [PDF], have had unacceptable social, environmental and economic consequences. Administered or backed by a government, an ECA uses taxpayer money to make it cheaper and less risky for domestic corporations to export or invest overseas. ECAs privatize the profit and socialize the risk while negatively impacting indigenous cultures and enironments, all with little or no governmental oversight or public awareness of the matter. So what can we do about it? [PDF]
posted by faux ami on Nov 26, 2004 - 14 comments

The problem isn't too much greed, but too much cowardly greed. "Spineless lenders, weak-kneed investors and meddling regulators intent on reducing risk pose a greater threat to the global economy than the volatile financial markets... 'The critic's image of the global financial markets as a giant casino is wrong," [writes British financial writer Daniel Ben-Ami], 'On the contrary, the modern financial markets are more often characterized by a fear of risk-taking than a reckless disregard for danger.'"
posted by tranquileye on Aug 2, 2001 - 6 comments